


The Way We Were

by exquisitelymorose



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Angst, F/F, Future, Marriage, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 19:21:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18079400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exquisitelymorose/pseuds/exquisitelymorose
Summary: "Charity is at war with the idea of reaching out to touch her, her own wife. She hates the doubt in her bones that tells her not to. She hates the traitorous anger that tells her she shouldn’t want to. But her fingertips still meet the top of her spine because this is her wife and she loves her. It might not be what it was but she does, she always does."





	The Way We Were

God, it hurts.

This physical thing that lives in her chest and creeps up her throat to choke her late at night and takes up so much space, much more than she cares to admit. Because Charity Dingle is tough, bloody tough but hell, she’s no good at this. When something hurts she swallows it down and down until it seeps through her veins, out the soles of her feet, just enough to stomp and boot down the cobblestone trail. But this is different because this is Vanessa and from first minute, she’d been different. Even when she’d stood in front of Vanessa, on that dark evening all those years ago, insisting that all she could offer was a bit of fun, she’d known there was more.

And now? Here she is, not so sure.

She looks down at the wedding band that wraps round her finger and tries not to think too hard about finding her wife’s next to the bathroom sink.

“Couldn’t very well wear it to surgery, could I?”

Charity doesn’t try to fight it anymore. To say, “you never used to leave it ‘round here though.” 

She’s not sure she wants the answers to the questions that lie waiting on her tongue so she doesn’t speak them at all.

When she tries to figure out the how’s and the when’s she thinks it must’ve been when they got their own place and Noah left, off to school on a footie scholarship. That was supposed to be _it_. Just the beginning of the rest of their lives. Charity, Vanessa, Moses and Johnny. “Fittest family in Emmerdale, I reckon,” Charity had said, slinging her arm around her wife’s shoulders, taking in their sons and their home. This utterly unexpected life they’d built. 

Sometimes when it all becomes too much she admonishes herself. “You’da been daft to think it would last.” Things never do.

She’d thought this thing, “domestic life,” with Vanessa would be easy. It’s what they wanted, wasn’t it? To get out of a home overrun with people, to have some simple peace and quiet, a place to call their own. Where they could scoff and roll their eyes at all the drama just outside their door, stuff that they just couldn’t be arsed with anymore. Charity had dreamed of the simplicity of it all but then it was in her hands and she could feel her fingers tightening with every day, about to shatter it all against her palms. The silence of a home without Paddy and Chas or Tracey or Noah, it was deafening. Everything was too wide open yet here she was, feeling caged. And there was Vanessa, eyes blue and expectant and _happy_. What was supposed to be light and easy, this life between them, it became heavy.

She thinks back to the day she told her wife she couldn’t make her any promises. When she was nothing more than a woman she cared for just a little and all she could give her was fun. She wonders exactly when “fun” became a thing that didn’t exist between them anymore as they orbited each other silently, drifting through hallways and a marriage without much more than a second glance. 

Laziness. That was a part of it for both of them, not really either of their faults though, was it? Their relationship had started in backrooms and alleys. Quick, dark fumbles with an exciting rush as they came against each others fingers and thighs, embarrassingly quickly, after full days of waiting and longing, their lives so separate. Then it had been between their respective flats and children and flatmates. Always, always sneaking around. 

Suddenly that was gone and oh what a luxury it seemed to be. No one to burst into the bedroom or the bathroom, no room off limits as soon as the boys went down for the night. There was always time and always space. The urgency fell away as they began every day knowing they would end it together, the desperation they once felt swiftly replaced with comfort and ease, always within reach. 

The boys fell into a routine. As per Vanessa’s request Charity hired another bartender to cover shifts and set a more regular schedule. Noah visited on weekends and Ryan would pop in the odd evening. Charity made the brew in the morning while Vanessa wrestled the boys into their coats. Vanessa turned down the sheets and retrieved Charity's pyjamas from the drawer while her wife locked up and made sure neither Moses or Johnny had snuck an iPad or some other offending item into their room and into bed. And day after day, week after week, month upon month, it continued. 

Charity would snake a hand over Vanessas hip under their sheet but found herself bringing it back as her tired wife tried to stifle a yawn. Vanessa tried to squeeze into the shower with Charity, quick before the boys woke, but the blonde was already running late, always. They both started to accept kisses and “later?” as promises. But the thing about “later” when all the days and all the months stretch on endlessly is that you can push it into infinity. When there’s nothing but time, the time never seems right. 

She supposes that’s normal. The early days, the honeymoon phase, people call it that for a reason. It’s not meant to last, you’re supposed to grow out of it. Bloody hell, she’s done it before. More times than she cares to admit. But this, this isn’t right. It doesn’t feel the same. Because her life is with Vanessa now and this wasn’t supposed to happen. Not with her. 

The first time they’d gone nearly three weeks with nothing more than goodnight cuddles and quick kisses Vanessa had come home, weary and insecure. They needed to try harder.

“Three flamin’ weeks? Christ, Ness, how did we-” Charity had breathed into the darkness of their bedroom, fingers trailing up and down her wife’s naked spine. 

“It just happens,” Vanessa mumbled sleepily against her neck. 

Charity clicked her tongue, “not to us, babe.” 

It had been an oversight, a weird hiccup. Time and life had gotten away from them, they’d just been so busy. It wasn’t going to happen again.

But then it did. And then it did once more. And then, that was their normal. 

Of course it wasn’t just that. It was so many things, unspoken and bubbling beneath the surface. Vanessa is sometimes resentful of Charity and the way she is with the boys. The fun one, the relaxed one, the parent that breezes in and out while she remains constant and disciplined, the one the boys don’t seem to beam at when they hear her coming. She becomes even more resentful of the way Charity gets, snarky and snide, when she asks nicely, then firmly, and then nags before she begs, to please just be home a little more often, take some more responsibility. 

And Charity would be lying if she didn’t admit, and she doesn't, that there’d been a growing bitterness souring her stomach since the trial. She felt Vanessa had made her lie when she assumed that it was over, that they’d found “Happily Ever After.” Because how could she ever tell her that it wasn't over? That it’ll never be over. And it’s not that Charity hadn’t hoped it would be because she had. But she’d had to realize that even if a person who was completely right for her, who was pure and well intentioned and held her with nothing but love, even if they wanted her and did all they could for her, they still couldn’t heal her. Vanessa’s love gave her strength but it couldn’t save her. And she resented that, that the woman lying next to her at night couldn’t see through her enough to know that at times she was broken and empty. 

At some point she realizes that she’s made her schedules just so that she’s crawling into bed after her wife has fallen asleep. And in the mornings she notices that Vanessa’s alarm clock sounds earlier, dragging herself and the boys out of bed before Charity will have a chance to properly see them off. When they’re home together, they drift past each other with muttered updates about school exams and appointment times, of dinner obligations with Megan and Frank where they’ll sit across from each other and probably not meet each others eyes. 

When Charity hears a ragged breath from Vanessas side of the bed one night she wonders if this thing between them, the emptiness, the nothingness, if it lies over her like a weighted blanket too? Or if she feels it at all. 

It’s late one evening, Charity has herself scheduled to close when a young, unfamiliar couple comes in. She’s not sure how young they really are because these days she’s feeling her age. She feels old. She looks at these young people around her, new relationships, new career paths, goals to accomplish, dreams to realize. The envy is so thick in her veins it feels dangerous. And this couple is doing themselves no favours. Not in her pub. They lace their fingers together and look down at their joined hands as if taking in the most marvellous sight. They press their lips together like they’d be happy to do only that for the rest of their living days. They laugh, low, small sounds like a shared secret. And when they look at each other, they do so like they’re really seeing one another. The anger rolls through Charity, hot and deep. 

She catches sight of herself in a window after settling drinks at a table and her own reflection tightens her stomach, grips her with a stony agony. She looks nice. Her hair is done, her makeup done, her outfit characteristically chic. She looks like herself, like the woman Vanessa fell in love with and couldn’t leave alone, she’s the woman that her wife used to lust after, the one that she couldn’t go more than a day or two without seeing or touching. She is the same woman only now she’s angry. Bitter with rejection, with neglect, with the suspicion of being unwanted. Charity knows what she would’ve done a decade or so ago. She would’ve found any person in this place willing to give her a second glance and she would've used them for everything their body could offer. She would bring the marks on her skin home, like a platter to serve to her wife, “look what you made me do.”But she doesn’t want to. 

The pub closes. She wipes everything twice over, double checks and triple checks the to-do list for the following day and tries not to notice the growing knot that sits low in her belly. The walk home is brisk and dull with darkness. Not a sound to be heard. The open air just as suffocating as the walls she’s about to let herself into. Their home is just as silent, almost just as dark save for the lamp that Vanessa still leaves on her for when she’s working late. A small decency that Charity realizes she’s been leaning too hard on to convince herself that they’re still okay. 

The stairs creak, her knee cracks. She lets herself into the bedroom in the complete darkness and finds the small nightstand lamp, clicking it on with the ease of a person used to living in shadows and dark places. The room illuminates and Charity finds herself looking. Not just looking but staring, unable to tear her eyes from the smooth curve of her wifes neck, the blonde hair over the pillow. She can’t see her face but it’s still her wife. A familiar stranger. The pain in her chest is almost unbearable as tears prick at the corners of her eyes. She tries to swallow it down, the desperation and the loss. But it’s all too much. She wants to cling to her. She wants to leave her alone. Charity undresses silently, slips on her pyjamas and tries to settle herself quietly on her side of the bed, the lamp clicked off. 

Shadows dance across the ceiling as the occasional car passes through the street below. Her eyes just won’t close. She tries to roll away from the sight and finds herself again met by her partners skin, just inches away. Vanessas breathing is even. She’s definitely asleep. Charity is at war with the idea of reaching out to touch her, her own wife, she hates the doubt in her bones that tells her not to. She hates the traitorous anger that tells her she shouldn’t want to. But her fingertips still meet the top of her spine because this is her wife and she loves her. It might not be what it was but she does, she always does. 

She watches her fingers trail down the soft material of Vanessas white cotton shirt. She’s warm and somehow the feel is strange, slow and timid. It’s so deliberate, the way she flattens her palm against Vanessas back, smoothing it around and over her hip like a fragile, breakable thing. 

“V?” She whispers so quietly, sure her breath could barely reach her wifes skin. 

Under her hand there’s a twitch and Vanessas breathing changes. She clears her throat lightly and allows a strength she doesn’t feel to seep into her voice, “Vanessa.”

“Mm?” Its such a tiny sound, Charity isn’t sure she made it. 

“Are you awake?”

“Mhm.”

It’s grumbled into their pillow and Charity suddenly feels guilty. Guilty that she’s going to do this here and now, when her wife is only barely awake, when she’s all cozed up in their bed, defenceless and unprepared for conversation. 

“Can you look at me?” Charity asks softly.

It takes a beat but she does. Charity holds the duvet up slightly so she doesn’t tangle as Vanessa turns then she lets it settle back down and reaches a hand to smooth it over Vanessas thigh and her hip. When she looks back up, into the eyes that are more alert then she expected, she see’s confusion. That’s all. No anger, no resentment. Just confusion. 

Their eyes connect and they stay there, in silence, breathing evenly. Just looking. Charity can feel that Vanessa knows. They’ve been pushing this off and off and off. She finally swallows the fear down and the words pass through her lips quietly, softly.

“Vanessa, are you happy?”

**Author's Note:**

> Please excuse my americanized language. I truly adore this couple and had a lovely time writing this. Please, please, leave your kudos and comments if you'd like to see this continued. It's a writers will to keep going. Even leave suggestions of what you'd like to see! Thank you.


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